Collaboration between Mississippi State’s transportation services and the city of Starkville will take three shuttle buses off campus and deploy them into the community next semester.
Two new shuttle routes dubbed “North” and “South” will span Starkville’s downtown area and Miss. Highway 12, providing students and Starkville residents with an alternative means of travel within the city.
The route system is financially supported by a 5311 grant, a grant funded by the Federal Transit Administration and designed to enhance the development of bus systems in communities with less than 50,000 residents. The systems must in turn provide residents with transportation to health care and educational facilities, places of employment and recreation and shopping areas.
The $387,000 grant will cover operational costs to literally get the wheels rolling on the new routes.
MSU director of support services Paul Welch said the application for the operational grant was approved last summer, though the opportunity to acquire a capital grant needed to purchase new buses was lost after Hurricane Katrina struck the Coast.
“We got the operational funding, but the [FTA] took the capital grant and sent it to the Coast to help rebuild,” Welch said. “So now, the city has agreed to take their money to help buy two buses, and the university is looking internally to find funding for two more buses.”
Welch said the downtown system requires four buses to operate efficiently.
“Three will be able to run en route in town, and the other would be on backup. The original grant asked for five buses, with four to run downtown on two different routes.”
The buses should be onboard in mid-July, with the city routes starting operations on the first day of classes.
MSU manager of transportation services Everett Kennard, who will oversee the routes, said they are drawn out to stop at vital places within the city.
“We’ll have one bus on the north route, which will service the hospital, doctor’s park and low-income areas,” Kennard said. “The southern route, which will have two buses, will go out to Lampkin Street and down to Wal-Mart, make a loop onto Highway 12 and onto campus, and stop at the Cullis Wade Depot. From there it will go down Russell Street and back to an interchange somewhere on Lampkin.”
Kennard added that transportation services must meet stipulations of the grant, including offering transportation to low-income citizens.
“We want to get them to the hospital areas, doctor’s areas and places like Kroger, Wal-Mart and Southern Family Markets,” he said.
Starkville city planner George Rummel said the free transportation is a necessity.
“The reason we routed one of the routes in the northeast part of the city was to help low-income families,” Rummel said. “I think once everyone gets used to it, they’ll learn that it will be a valuable asset to the community, especially when gas reaches $4 per gallon.”
Welch, Kennard and Rummel have driven the routes together to find central stopping points, one of which will be the new campus hub, the Cullis Wade Depot. The other is not yet drawn out, but Rummel said he wants it to be in front of the new justice complex downtown.
“We need a common meeting place where people know where to get onto the bus, a center point,” he said. “We want it to be at the justice complex.”
Welch credited former MSU President Charles Lee with taking a strong approach to improve relations through the city and university via the city route system.
“Dr. Lee was really big on university-city relationships, and he wanted to see a way that we could work with one another,” he said.
“We are in agreement about the success of the system, but the jury is still out,” Kennard added. “It all depends on ridership, how much it’s utilized and how much we can tweak our routes to stop where we need to stop. It’s going to take some time to know where our ridership is.”
Transportation services officials also wish to acquire the capital 5311 grant.
“We’re hopeful that we will get funding for the buses to replace some in our current fleet, and so we can run downtown,” Welch said. “We won’t know about that until August. We think we’ll be successful downtown, but it’s all going to hinge on funding.”
The ultimate goal, Welch said, is to create an independent transit authority to cater to both the city and university.
“We want to work toward a separate, freestanding authority for the city and campus, very much like what Clemson and [the University of] Arkansas have,” he said. “We’re very much in the infancy stage right now. First we’ve got to get the buses, then work with the city to get the routes established, and that’s a new area for us, just like when we started here on campus.”
CAPTION: shuttle
Students board the express campus shuttle. Shuttles will circulate the Starkville area beginning in August.